Excellent writing skills are crucial to academic achievement. In order to give our students the best chance at academic success, IST teachers have devised and adopted the following common guidelines for writing assessments in grades 6 to 10. These guidelines apply to all teachers of grades 6 to 10 at IST. All teachers are expected to use them when assigning graded writing tasks. These guidelines were established to ensure consistency across grade levels and to gradually increase expectations up to the end of Grade 10. A common approach and set of expectations will help students reinforce skills that have been explicitly taught in one or more subject areas and help teachers plan meaningful and appropriately challenging tasks.
When asking students to complete a writing assessment at IST, teachers should:
- Provide an overview of the task and review it with students
- Follow the length guidelines in the chart below
- Model writing the task for students
- Provide a task-specific clarification in the form of a rubric
- Review the rubric with students
- Review and evaluate exemplars with students (see Writers’ INK for exemplars)
- Provide students with time in class to work on the task and follow the homework guidelines when asking students to work outside of class.
- Provide students with an opportunity to receive peer feedback during an in-class writer’s workshop in groups of 3-5 students (usually requires 40-80 minutes of class time depending on the length of the task)
- Provide formative feedback on a complete draft unless students have previously received feedback on a similar written task using the same rubric.
- Require students to visit the The Literacy Lab at least once assessment and encourage them to visit on their own thereafter.
- Provide written or oral feedback on final submission within 10 days.
